POLITICS OF HATE

Sitaram Yechury

[This is an expanded version of the article, "Fundamentally Flawed," that appeared in the Hindustan Times, 25 September, 2003.]

THE editor of the RSS mouthpiece, Panchjanya (Hindi), has spewed vitriolic venom in furthering the RSS agenda of converting the secular democratic Indian republic into a fascistic "Hindu Rashtra." It is simply amazing how such blood-curdling hatred can be propagated under the title "Hate Never Pays" (Tarun Vijay, Hindustan Times, September 16, 2003).

DISTORTIONS GALORE

Shorn of bestial rhetoric, this piece contains deliberate historical distortions to buttress its hate campaign against the religious minorities. In the long list of foreigners who attacked various Indian kings are mentioned, apart from the Muslim rulers, the French and the Portuguese, but not the British! This omission is not accidental. After all, it was against the British that Indians, irrespective of their religious affiliations, fought for freedom and liberty. The devout Rani of Jhansi, Laxmi Bai, fought till her death to put on the throne of India the "progeny of Babar," Bahadur Shah Zafar. But this very Hindu-Muslim unity is an anathema for these pseudo-Hindus who can only thrive on spreading deep the communal hatred and reaping consequent political benefits. 

It is precisely due to such a rabid communal approach that the RSS not only refused to participate in the united Indian people's freedom struggle against the British, but, on occasions, collaborated with the colonial authorities. 

The Bombay home department, during the 1942 Quit India movement, observed, "The Sangh has scrupulously kept itself within the law and in particular has refrained from taking part in the disturbances that broke out in August 1942" (emphasis added). Even one of its leading lights, Nanaji Deshmukh, once raised the question, "Why did the RSS not take part in the liberation struggle as an organisation?" Further, throughout the national movement, the RSS always collaborated with the princely states who stood in firm opposition to the freedom struggle. One of their closest allies was Raja Hari Singh of Kashmir who was reluctant to join India.

In order to conceal this reality, they spread canards against the Left. One need not go into the details of the already richly documented history of the role of the Left in India's struggle for freedom. It would suffice to note that when the country was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Quit India movement, the then president of India, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, addressing the midnight session of the parliament, said: "After large scale strikes in mills in Kanpur, Jamshedpur and Ahmedabad, a despatch from Delhi dated 5 September, 1942, to the secretary of state, in London, reported about the Communist Party of India: ‘the behaviour of many of its members proves what has always been clear, namely, that it is composed of anti-British revolutionaries’ ” (emphasis added).

FROM HATRED TO PARTITION

We are informed by the RSS organ’s editor that "it was the hate factor that led to a section of Muslims demanding the partition of our common motherland." True. But this is only half the truth. Having expressed his open admiration for Savarkar, Mr Vijay refuses to inform us that it was Savarkar who first advocated the two-nation theory. In his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha in 1938, he said, "India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main, the Hindus and the Muslims." This was a full three years before Mohd Ali Jinnah raised this very slogan. The British admirably abetted this communal divide to achieve the partition of the country.

During the course of the freedom struggle, three distinct visions of what should constitute independent India emerged. The vision of a secular democratic Indian republic laying the foundations for a modern India was then championed by the Congress. The Left went further, seeking the transformation of political independence of the republic into the economic independence of its people. Unless such a transformation is achieved, the Left continues to maintain that it would difficult to even sustain the secular democratic republic.

However, in complete opposition to these two visions was the third that sought to construct independent India on the basis of the religious denomination of its people. This vision had a twin expression. One was the demand for a "Hindu Rashtra" advanced by the RSS, and the other for the creation of an Islamic state advanced by the Muslim League. While the latter achieved its objective through the cruel partition of our country, the former vision was rejected by a majority of Indians, who, in turn, were Hindus. It was this rejection of the RSS vision by the Indian people that consumed the life of the Mahatma. It was this "hate" fostered by the RSS that made a Hindu fanatic kill the Mahatma.

We are informed that it is the hate against the Hindus that led to the Pakistani occupation of "two-thirds" of Kashmir. No one can hold any brief for the hatred spewed by Islamic fundamentalists and their terrorist attacks. The overwhelming majority of Indian people stand together in patriotic unity against this menace. Mr Vijay, however, chooses not to inform us that at that time those Pakistani raiders were halted and pushed back by the Kashmir Muslims under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah. It was, again, this thing that forced a reluctant Hindu King of Jammu & Kashmir, Raja Hari Singh, to accede to India.

MAJORITY INDICTS RSS

We are being told that "we hate to be hateful." Very true. A majority of Indians, like the majority that rejected the RSS vision of a fascistic "Hindu Rashtra," hate to be hateful. But not so the pseudo-Hindu communalists.  Every single judicial enquiry into communal riots --- starting from the reports on the Ahmedabad riots in 1969, Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad riots in 1970, Tellicherry riots in 1971, Jamshedpur riots in 1979, Kanyakumari riots in 1982, the Srikrishna commission report on Mumbai riots of 1992-93 to the plethora of reports by constitutional bodies like the National Human Rights Commission and independent inquiries into the savage state-sponsored communal carnage in Gujarat --- have all indicted the RSS, by name, for fuelling tensions and perpetrating the attacks against the minorities. Mind you, every single one of these commissions was headed by respected members of the highest echelons of the judiciary, and all of them were Hindus!

FUNDAMENTALISMS FEED ONE ANOTHER

We are asked: if there was anything that could have prevented us from declaring independent India a sovereign Hindu state and putting Muslims as second class citizens? This is precisely what the RSS wanted. This was chillingly articulated in 1939 by the then RSS chief, M S Golwalkar, in his treatise We or our Nationhood Defined. He says non-Hindus in "Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i e, of the Hindu nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment --- not even citizen's rights." This fascistic project was prevented from taking shape by the Indian patriots, a majority of whom were Hindus.  

The Jamaat-e-Islami was founded two years after Golwalkar's book was published. On August 26, 1941, under the leadership of Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, its founding conference was held in Pathankot. The same Maududi had once said: "If a Hindu government based on Hindu law came to India and the law of Manu became the law of land as a result of which Muslims were treated (as) untouchables and were not given any share in the government --- not only that, they did not even get the citizenship rights --- I would have no objection."

Hindu communalism and Muslim fundamentalism feed on each other. Nothing can illustrate this better than a report that appeared in the Hindustan Times on July 19, 1999.

In the process, both spread communal poison deeper, threatening the very fabric of our country's unity and integrity. Both act against the interests of the majority of the people they claim to represent. India today is a secular democracy precisely because a majority of the Hindus and Muslims rejected such politics.

It is indeed tragic that, invoking ghosts of the past, reinventing history, transplanting ancient and medieval methods of destruction to modern times and creating illusory enemies for their temporary political gains, pseudo-Hindus are dragging India back into the darkness of medieval bestiality. It, once again, falls on the shoulders of the majority of Indians, irrespective of their religious affiliations, to take India into the future as a vibrant modern republic. For the sake of India, i e, Bharat, this fascistic communal project will have to be defeated, once again, as it was at the time of India's independence.